By Al Benson Jr. On September 26, 2010 at 2:39 PM
By Al Benson Jr.
Recently I talked with a man who lives near me that is buying some property out on the bayou because he wants to build a house there and retire out there. It’s a pretty spot and he enjoys it. Only problem is, the federal government may have something to say as to whether they allow him to do that or not, and with the ever-leftward direction they are leaning in they probably will not.
It seems as if that bastion of liberty, Senator Christopher Dodd, has introduced into the Senate an abomination called the “Livable Communities Act.” One article I read noted that this was probably inspired by the United Nations as part of its goal of controlling the ignorant masses “for their own good, naturally”.
The plan creates an entire new federal bureaucracy (just what we need, one more federal bureaucracy!) the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, which will have around $4 billion to play with (stimulus money?). The law is being promoted as an effort to curb strip malls and urban sprawl. No one is in favor of urban sprawl but is another federal agency the way to deal with it? Hardly. This is something that needs to be handled at the local level not the federal level, but why let it be handled locally when you can institute yet one more federal bureaucracy and further control people’s lives and local communities?
Brian Fitzpatrick of World Net Daily has written: “Michael Shaw of Freedom Advocates, a pro-constitutional rights group, told WND, ‘They call it smart growth. It literally means they draw a circle around the community and say nothing will be developed outside this wall. Land inside the wall goes up in price as shortages develop. You end up with high-rises, with people living on the top floors, stores on the bottom floors and offices in the middle. Humans wind up living in the sky. They never touch the ground or leave the building’.”
The bill was approved by the Senate Banking Committee in August and is supposedly on a “fast track” which means they want to get the Senate to vote on it before the November elections because if they lose power in November they might not have the votes to do it. They want it done now. Needless to say this bill goes along with the Marxist agenda of removing private property and empowering the feds to say who can do what and where.
Ed Braddy, writing for the American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com has accurately noted that: “…the Livable Communities Act is top-down central planning aimed at changing where we live and work and how we travel.”
“Social engineering is at the heart of the Livable Communities Act, where federal planners hope to reduce personal mobility as measured in vehicle miles traveled and shift housing patterns from single-family homes in the suburbs to small apartments in cramped central cities.” Doesn’t this all sound really wonderful?
That neighbor of mine really didn’t want his own privately-owned home out on the bayou after all. What he really wants (because the feds will force him to take it) is a nice little crowded apartment on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Monroe, Louisiana because he won’t be allowed to travel out to the bayou--that land out there is for “special federal use” and not for us ordinary peons.
No doubt that land out on the bayou will be reserved for some federal commissar because, after all, since he is charged with the difficult task of telling us ordinary folks how and where to live, he needs some place quiet and peaceful for the weekends, right?
This bill is S 1619 and folks should get hold of their senators before November 2nd and tell them they better not dare to vote for this. This monstrosity will be administered through local communities, which, in effect, makes the local folks subservient to the elite in Washington.
You say you’re not enthusiastic about Washington’s wonderful plan for your life--why you ingrate! Here the bureaucrats are trying to control everything in your life so you don’t have to make any decisions about anything and you don’t even appreciate it! To paraphrase “Some bureaucrats just don’t get no respect.”